A free press in a free society? : American post-Vietnam military public-affairs strategies and their influence on press coverage

(1)

A Free Press in a Free Society?

American Post-Vietnam Military Public-Affairs Strategies and Their Influence on Press Coverage

By Camilla Kirkemo

A Thesis Presented to

The Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages -North American Area Studies-

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisor: David C. Mauk

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree

UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2009

(2)

To my grandfather who taught me the importance of asking questions,

my grandmother who makes sure that I never leave the house hungry, and my mom and dad for all their love and support.

(3)

Introduction

Ever since the days of the early pioneers, journalists have battled with governmental and military restrictions when searching for, gathering, or publishing information about American military operations. When the colonies were under British rule, newspapers were under heavy restrictions and were constantly monitored by officials employed by the British throne. The first multi-paged newspaper published in the colonies was Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick in Massachusetts. In its first issue, published on September 25 1690, the editor, Benjamin Harris, labelled Great Britain’s ally, the Native Americans, “miserable savages”. Harris’ negative remark was perceived as criticism of Massachusetts’ colonial policy which, as Michael Emery explains, focused in 1690 on winning and not alienating the Native Americans.¹ The newspaper was shut down by the Governor and Council of Massachusetts.²

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a wave of liberalism had taken root in the colonies. Jeffrey A. Smith cites Bernard Bailyn’s work on the American Revolution.³ Bailyn argues that Cato’s Letters, published in British newspapers in the 1720’s, greatly influenced the way in which people living in the colonies regarded governmental power. The letters stated that the government only existed to serve the people and that freedom of expression gave the people the information they needed to evaluate the performance of people elected to official governing positions.⁴ This idea of considering the government a servant of the people was put into action when the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776, but when the U.S. Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in 1787, there was no mention of freedom of expression. Richard Davis states that the Founding Fathers had deemed a freedom of expression clause unnecessary because the enumerated powers of the central government did not include powers to violate rights such as freedom of the press. In 1787, freedom of expression clauses had already been incorporated into nine of the fourteen state constitutions. For example, the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 stated, “That freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”⁵ It soon became apparent that many of the states would refuse to ratify the Constitution if it did not include a freedom of expression clause. The state of Virginia could not gather enough votes for ratification until Governor Edmund Randolph asked the Founding Fathers to add a Bill of Rights.⁶ As a result, freedom of speech and of the press were included in the First Amendment in the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights.⁷

(6)

The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”⁸ The press was therefore able to scrutinize governmental officials and their actions without being censored or shut down as Benjamin Harris was in 1690.

Christopher Paul cites Herbert N. Foerstel’s book, Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The Origins and Applications of the Freedom of Information Act, which quotes Wallace Parks. Parks believes that the First Amendment made the press a watchdog and a check on the three branches of the government. He also argues that journalists have to act as a check on the government because the American people have a “right to know” what their own government is involved in at all times.⁹ The press can influence people’s perceptions of a range of topics, and many regards it as “an accessory to the political process.” Subsequently, many have nick-named the press a “fourth estate”.¹⁰ A free press is one of the cornerstones in a democracy. If people can raise their voice and criticize an elected government’s achievements and way of governing without being subjected to reprimands, it becomes increasingly difficult to abuse governmental power. If an elected official does something his or her electors disapprove of, that official might not be re-elected. Newspapers also play an important role in informing people about the state of their country. A poll by the Pew Research Center reveals that in 2000, sixty-three percent of people active in politics learned about presidential election campaigns and candidates by reading newspapers.¹¹

Especially during wartime it is very important to be informed about what one’s government is doing. When a government declares war, it wages war literally in the name of its electors. If the press is placed under restrictions during military operations it cannot, for example, inform citizens about how the operation is progressing, what types of challenges are faced on the battlefield, or how many casualties the operation has produced. If not informed about the true picture of military engagement, citizens might condone further military activity which they might otherwise have objected to if fully informed. Fully informed citizens are better equipped to debate issues and thus better quipped to make decisions which suits their own personal perception and believes.

Jonathan Mermin argues in Debating War and Peace that it is often assumed that the ideal of the First Amendment is fulfilled in the U.S.¹² Despite the constitutionally protected right of a free and independent press, various presidents and military bureaucracies have continued to impose different restrictions on the press at wartime. In addition to ensuring a free and independent press, the U.S. Constitution also established a national military to

“provide for the common defense” of the newly created republic and Article II, section 8a of

(7)

the American Constitution states that “The President shall be the commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.”¹³

Since 1791, the press and the military have thus shared a common goal in that they both seek to protect the U.S. Constitution, but for different reasons and through different means. The press can be regarded as a protector of the American democratic value-system. By evaluating and criticizing governmental actions and decisions, the press ensures that the American people are informed about what their elected governmental officials are doing. The military, on the other hand, protects physical values such as material interests, American soil, and the nation’s citizens. Based on this mutual goal of protecting America and all the country entails, it may seem logical for the press and the military to cooperate in a positive environment to ensure the best protection of America as possible. However, even after the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution, this has not been the case at times of military activity.

Since the American Civil War (1861-1865), the government and the military have imposed severe restrictions on the press out on the battlefield. Doris A. Graber and Major Raymond R. Hill Jr. argue that the Civil War can be regarded as the first military engagement during which the press was prevented from collecting and publishing information about the war. President Abraham Lincoln blocked the distribution of newspapers and took control over the telegraph lines transmitting news of the war across the country.¹⁴ In World War I, Congress enacted the Espionage Act which made it illegal to utter, print, write, or publish anything that would cast contempt on or bring the American government and Constitution into disrepute or which demonstrated support for Germany.¹⁵ Graber writes that more than 2000 people, including journalists, were taken to court suspected of having disregarded the Act.¹⁶ Furthermore, during World War II, the press was restricted by both formal government and military censorship, exemplified by President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to establish in December 1941 the Office of Censorship under the First War Powers Act. Up until 1945, the office was authorized to censor mail, cables, newspapers, magazines, films, and broadcasts while the military was authorized to censor news reports. Journalists accepted being censored because if they refused their access to the battlefields would be severely limited.¹⁷ The controversial nature of the Korean War in 1950 made it difficult for the press to write supportive or positive stories about U.S. military involvement. President Harry S.

Truman and General Douglas MacArthur (U.S. Army) feared that negative press coverage would influence public opinion about U.S. military engagement in the war and endanger the military’s war efforts. All news reports written out on the battlefield had to be cleared by

(8)

Army headquarters before being released to the civilian public.¹⁸ As the Vietnam War progressively deteriorated, news reports were highly managed by the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Journalists were not placed under formal censorship, but information about the true state of the war was witheld from the public sphere.¹⁹

Since Vietnam, journalists seeking to cover U.S. military operations have in varying degrees been subjected to military ground rules and censorship. During the Grenada Invasion (1993), the Panama intervention (1989), the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), the Somalia intervention (1992-1993), the Haiti intervention (1994), the Bosnia intervention (1995), the Kosovo War (1991), and the Afghanistan War (2001-present), journalists had, to various degrees, a hard time gaining access to newsworthy information. But during the Iraq War in 2003, the Pentagon and the Bush administration, instead of regarding news coverage a liability, allowed journalists to embed with different military units for weeks and months at a time. Being embedded meant that journalists were stationed with a military unit out on the battlefield. For weeks, sometimes for months at a time, journalists lived, slept, and traveled with a particular military unit. Staying out with the units around the clock meant that embeds were stationed at the front lines of battles and could thus report live from the scene or write very detailed articles about the battles. With the help of satellite-telephones, news reports were sent back to the news bureaus in the U.S. within a few minutes.

Hypothesis and Method

Because a free press is one of the cornerstones in a democratic country such as the U.S., this research paper aims to test the following hypothesis: that compared to earlier post-Vietnam military public-affairs strategies, the public-affairs strategy in the invasion phase of the Iraq War allowed the American press at a time of armed conflict to serve as a check on the government and inform the American people about military progress without endangering military operational strategy and security. The paper will also examine why public-affairs strategies have been implemented and what factors have influenced the decision to use the various strategies.

Although the paper examines how the press has experienced and reacted to various military public-affairs strategies, the term “media” will be used whenever covering topics dealing with the media-business as a whole, which in addition to the press includes television and radio broadcasting. For example, when the paper describes the attitude of military personnels to journalists, no distinction will be made between journalists working for newspapers and those working for television. When examining the procedure of embedding

(9)

journalists, the term “press embeds” will be used when examining press journalists’

experiences. Whenever the paper focuses on a variety of embedded journalists, the term

“media embeds” will be used. The first reason for using two terms to describe embeds is that doing so will separate embedded press journalists from embedded journalists working for television or radio stations, which are not the focus of this paper. Second, because the paper seeks to balance the military’s view of public-affairs strategy as well as the view of the press, using the term “embeds” alone would create an imbalance between the two points of views, since “embed” is usually regarded as a militaristic term when discussing media-military relations.

To obtain a complete picture of how various military public-affair strategies have influenced news coverage since the Vietnam War, the best solution would unquestionably be to analyze all U.S. military operations between 1975 and 2003. However, due restricition in terms of the length, this research paper will focus on five military operations: the Grenada Invasion (1983), the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), the Bosnia intervention (1995), the Afghanistan War (2001), and the invasion phase of the Iraq War (2003).

This paper relies on a comparative historical case-study method. The main reason for choosing a comparative case-study as the method applied is that this allows one to follow a theoretical replication design throughout multiple cases.²⁰ By using theoretical replication, the paper will be able to systematically compare and contrast levels of journalistic access to the battlefields and how various levels have affected the military’s operational strategy and security. At the same time, it will be possible to examine how various public-affairs strategies have affected the press’s ability to access information and serve as a check on the government during armed conflict. In analyzing various levels of access, the paper will be able explain why the press in some of the five military operations was subjected to restrictive public- affairs strategies while it was less restricted in other operations.²¹ A range of different sources can be applied when using a comparative case-study method. Because the five cases cover a time span of twenty years, it will be possible to extract broad and varied points of views regarding how public-affairs strategy affects press coverage and military operational strategy and security.

The paper will rely on a variety of sources from within the media-business, with most emphasis on the press, especially journalists working for The New York Times and Washington Post. Both newspapers have extensive coverage of foreign affairs and are considered by the world of academia to be newspapers of repute. Newspaper articles, essays, autobiographies, and historical accounts and assessments written by journalists and editors

(10)

will serve as primary sources. Individual research-projects, surveys and old interviews will serve as secondary sources when discussing levels of journalistic access and the quality of press coverage. In addition, autobiographies, personal accounts, after action- and lessons learned reports, and articles written by military personnel serve as primary sources when examining military justifications for implementing various public-affairs strategies.

Unclassified military documents such as military doctrines and ground rules will also be given extensive attention. Individual military research projects, interviews and surveys will serve as secondary sources.

Structure

Military public-affairs strategies and their effect on operational strategy and security and press coverage is a complex and constantly evolving research area. As this research-paper will show, whenever a new military operation is launched, both journalists and the military face new challenges that need to be solved. Due to the choice of method, the research-paper is divided into five chapters. Chapters 1-4 are written chronologically and each chapter attempts to balanced equally the points of view of the media and military. Chapters 2-4 present three different military public-affairs strategies.

The public-affairs strategy classification-system used in this research-paper has been borrowed from Thomas Rid’s excellent book War and Media Operations whose main focus is American military strategic innovation. The book outlines a military public-affairs learning curve from Vietnam to Afghanistan and examines whether or not public-affairs lessons learned were implemented in the Iraq War. This research-paper will also examine military public-affairs strategies in post-Vietnam military operations, although on a smaller scale.

Instead of focusing solely on strategic innovation in public-affairs as Rid does, this research- paper will also examine how various public-affairs strategies have influenced the press’

ability to serve as a check on the government during military engagements. Currently, several works about journalistic restrictions during wartime exists. Christopher Paul’s book Reporters on the Battlefield, Greg McLaughlin’s The War Correspondent and Frank Aukofer’s America’s Team are just a few of the works that have been written about the subject. Because this research-paper examines how three explicit military public-affairs strategies have influenced military operational strategy and security and The New York Times and the Washington Post journalists’ ability to serve as a check on the government as well as inform the American people about American war engagements, it does not replicate any other previous works.

(11)

The first chapter serves as a background chapter. It demonstates the way in which the media and the military came to regard one another as the U.S. gradually became more involved in the Vietnam War during the Johnson presidency. The outcome, a very negative and soured relationship, has served as a foundation for how journalists and military personnel have regarded one another in post-Vietnam military operations in terms of journalistic access to both information and units deployed out in the fields. Part one of the chapter focuses on media-military relations in the years 1950-1967, while part two identifies a negative shift in media-military relations, epitomized by the Tet Offensive in January 1968. Military personnels’ perception of media news coverage and journalistic response to an escalating war is presented. The chapter relies heavily on works written by political science professor Daniel C. Hallin, senior historian William M. Hammond, history professor Clarence R. Wyatt, and former war correspondent for The New York Times and the Washington Post Peter Braestrup.

Chapter two examines restrictive military public-affairs strategy. Part one of the chapter focuses on the news blackout imposed by the military during the American-led invasion of Grenada. Five military justifications for imposing the news blackout are presented. The reaction of the press to the blackout and how the blackout affected the American people’s “right to know” are extensively discussed. Part two of the chapter show how military public-affairs lessons learned in the Grenada Invasion and a new type of war environment influenced public-affairs strategy and press coverage in the the Persian Gulf War. The chapter relies on works written by researchers Marcia Block and Geoff Mungham, Tapir-fellow Thomas Rid, journalists Peter Braestrup and John J. Fialka, and associate professor of political science and independent defense analyst Pascale Combelles-Siegel.

Chapter three provides an evaluation of experimental military public-affairs strategy in the Bosnia intervention and the Afghanistan War. The first part of the chapter focuses on the Bosnia intervention which was the first U.S. military operations in which the term

“embedded” was used in military public-affairs guidelines dealing with the procedure of attaching journalists to military units during war operations. Part two of the chapter discuss the Pentagon’s two-fold public-affairs strategy in the Afghanistan War and an evaluation of the way in which journalists and military personnel experienced the embedding-procedure is provided. This evaluation is two-fold as both military personnel and embeds from the Washington Post and The New York Times do not agree about whether embedding can be considered a success or a failure. Main contributors in the chapter are senior editor Richard J.

Newman, Lieutenant Commander Raymundo Villarreal Jr., Washington Post journalists Peter Baker, Susan Glasser and Carol Morello, and The New York Times journalist Michael Gordon.

(12)

Chapter four provides an analysis of the Pentagon’s strategic public-affairs strategy in the invasion-phase of the Iraq War. Military strategist and historian Carl Von Clausewitz’s

“center of gravity”-theory serves as the foundation when discussing the U.S. Department of Defense’s Embedded Media Program. Both political and military justifications for implementing the program, as well as the program’s design, are examined. The chapter also provides an extensive evaluation of the program’s successes and failures with regard to press coverage and military operational security and strategy. The terms “in bed” and “Stockholm Syndrome” will serve as a basis for the evaluation. Furthermore, the chapter relies on a wide range of sources, but the following are particularly important: independent researcher Richard K. Wright, Washington Post journalists William Branigin and Peter Baker, Thomas Rid, the Pew Research Center, and U.S Army and U.S. Marine after action reports.

Chapter five analyzes how a clash between the cultures of the media and the military makes it difficult for journalists and the military to cooperate during a military operation. The clash of cultures serves as a basis for evaluating how restrictive, experimental, and strategic public-affairs strategies have influenced military operational strategy and security and the press’ ability to cover the five cases. Two analyses examine how the Pentagon, military commanders, and presidents have used military public-affairs strategies as instruments for improving military reputation and securing political agendas and goals.

(13)

Chapter 1 The Foundation:

The Vietnam War

1.0 Early Media Coverage of the Vietnam War

According to Clarence R. Wyatt, American media was not particularly interested in U.S.

involvement in the continuously escalating conflict in Vietnam between the years 1955- 1960.²² Large American news organizations had few resources invested in the country²³ and news articles that were written from or about Vietnam appeared as rarely “as a cold day hit Saigon.”²⁴ The first American bureau staffed by a correspondent with full-time responsibility for covering Vietnam was established in Saigon in November 1961. By November 1962, the Associated Press, United Press International and The New York Times had established permanent news bureaus in South Vietnam.²⁵ Due to a minimal media presence in Vietnam, journalists had to rely on information provided by the U.S. government when reporting on the escalating conflict. Daniel C. Hallin, Major Paul Ambrose, and Clarence R. Wyatt argue that due to this dependency on government-provided information, most news coverage was very supportive of American intervention in Vietnam up to the mid-1960s because President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy wanted to portay American involvement in the war in a positive fashion.²⁶

It is easy to criticize journalists for bluntly relying on government-provided information without being critical of its content. What is important to take into consideration when analyzing journalists’ largely uncritical view is the very nature of the relationship that existed between journalists and the government during the early stages of the war. In the 1950s, journalists and the government had developed a dependency-relationship with each other. The government used radio broadcasts and the press to communicate with the public, both nationally and internationally. In order to serve as a check on the government as well educating the public about governmental decisions and actions, journalists depended on information covering various issues affecting the American public. They depended on government information in order to write objective professional journalism²⁷, “journalists depended on their relations with the state to make objectivity work as a practical form of journalism, and objectivity, in turn, was essential to the new role the press was playing as a

‘fourth branch of government’.”²⁸ The combination of serving as an objective check on the government while being dependent on the same government for information is not ideal when

(14)

covering a war. Not having the ability to provide a breadth of information made it difficult to report about the gradual American involvement in South Vietnam.

1.1 “Maximum Candor”

President Lyndon Baines Johnson, adhering to President Eisenhower’s “domino-theory”, believed that if South Vietnam fell to communism, other countries would soon follow. Pauline Maier argues that Johnson was determined not “to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went,” believing an American withdrawal from South Vietnam would eventually damage his reputation and chances for a re-election in 1969.²⁹ If the U.S withdrew, Johnson also feared that American commitment to defend freedom against communist aggression in other places around the world might loose credibility.³⁰

As American commitment to the war persisted, more and more journalists covered the war which was getting worse by the month. An increase in the number of journalists made it difficult for the Johnson administration to sell American military commitment in a county most Americans had no cultural or political affiliation with. Wyatt argues that President Johnson took massive advantage media’s need for information. The Johnson administration believed that they would get across its own view of the war and the war’s progress more easily if journalists were provided with the kind of information needed to satisfy their editors and the American people.³¹ If journalists had enough information to report on, they would not commit themselves to investigative journalism. Similarly, Peter Braestrup, chief of the Washington Post’s Saigon news bureau, claims that in order to keep public sentiments about the war high, Johnson and his advisors in the Pentagon consistently tried to counter any news that contradicted the official line that the military was making progress in Vietnam.³²

To prevent investigative journalism, the “Maximum Candor” public-affairs strategy was launched in the summer of 1964. In essence, Maximum Candor can be described as an instrument implemented to please journalists and not make them question Johnson’s war strategy. For example, journalists returning from the battlefield were provided with access to the same “comfort facilities” as higher ranking military officers had.³³ That meant access to hot showers, televised baseball games, cold beers, and post exchanges.³⁴ “With some luck, the newsmen were able to shoot some good film or produce a story at an outpost, catch a ride back to Saigon the same evening, get the final story on its way to the US, and have a French dinner downtown.”³⁵ The way journalists were treated by the U.S. military often flabbergasted the French and British supporting troops.³⁶ Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) also increased the number of briefings held for journalists. Information about the progress of

(15)

the war was made available every hour and journalists were also provided with much help when seeking to enter the battlefield.³⁷

Hallin argues that Johnson’s “news managing” plan can largely be considered a success, at least up to January 1968. Despite a deteriorating war, between August 1965 and January 1968, the number of favorable press editorial comments exceeded negative editorial comments eleven to three. He notes, however, that it is difficult to measure the objectivity of a news report. The measure is therefore scored very conservatively and he only included the most explicit instances of where the reporting is clearly favorable or unfavourable.³⁸ Despite of this conservative assessment, the numbers clearly indicate that a majority of the editorial comments were positive and favorable to American intervention. Hallin points to a New York Times article on the Gulf of Tonkin-incident, published on August 4, 1964, as a great example of how the news were being managed in the early years of the war.³⁹ By presenting pure facts, the article is indeed objective but it does not ask critical questions concerning the facts it presents. As Hallin explains, “When the president says, ‘Black is white’, you write, ‘The president said black is white.’”⁴⁰

Although not intentionally lying to journalists about the true picture of the war, Hallin writes that civilian officials in Washington contributed to keeping journalists misinformed throughout the mid-1960s. The few people within the administration who believed that the American people should be informed about the state of the war feared that their influence in the policy process would be jeopardized if they spoke out. In Congress, the principle of presidential prerogative in foreign policy was still strong and it prevented many legislators from criticizing President Johnson overall war-strategy.⁴¹

1.2 Increase of Media Scepticism

In March 1965, Johnson realized that American troops soon had to be implemented into the ground war. In order to draw public attention away from the issue of a deeper American involvement in the war, William M. Hammond argues that the State and the Defense Department de-emphasized the American role and diverted all the attention to South Vietnamese accomplishments.⁴² Max Boot provides another example of how President Johnson drew attention away from the conflict. When the first U.S. Marines landed in Da Nang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city, on March 8 1965, Johnson drew attention to his domestic policy rather than foreign policy by proposing a new crime control package in the U.S.⁴³

(16)

By diverting the focus of interest, officials also aimed at turning journalists into counter-insurgency correspondents. Critics of the plan, among them U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. military operations in Vietnam between 1964-1968, and Colonel Benjamin Legare (U.S. Army), were convinced that the tactic of downplaying the American role was bound to fail because journalists would eventually see for themselves that American soldiers had become active rather than passive actors on the battlefield. Instead, General Westmoreland advocated a plan that involved a comprehensive background briefing for selected newsmen on American combat operations. Fearing that the background briefings would produce negative news reports, the Johnson administration vetoed the plan.⁴⁴ As the news about further American involvement in the ground war became known, massive complains from Congress and the media poured in, arguing that a “dangerous and reckless departure from accepted policy had occurred”⁴⁵ and that the de-emphasizing of the American role only indicated that a cover-up was in progress.⁴⁶

As Hallin argues, despite major efforts made to manipulate journalists’ war comprehension, it is possible to identify a change in news coverage reporting during the mid- 1960s. As the war progressed, several journalists experienced that information presented at official military briefings often directly contradicted what they themselves had seen.⁴⁷ James Reston, working for The New York Times, for example, argues on May 17 1966, that President Johnson mixed up news and truths.⁴⁸

Two offices were responsible for providing public support for the media in Vietnam, the Joint United States Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) and the MACV office, a command subordinate to the commander-in chief in the Pacific, Office of Information (MACOI). The MACOI, headed by Brigadier Winant K. Sidle, was the official voice of MACV and it prepared the daily military briefings that were presented at the JUSPAO. Military briefings consisted of daily operational reports presented by field commanders brought together at the MACV operations center.⁴⁹ Braestrup argues that it became apparent that the Johnson administrations’ goal of presenting distorted information about the war began to fail as more and more journalists started to believe that governmental information provided at the JUSPAO was based on “hasty, fragmentary, inevitably inaccurate field reports of action in a theatre of war where there was no actual front line, moving or stationary.”⁵⁰ Further, Braestrup claims that these ill feelings developed because information provided at the military briefings were too broad-based and could not be linked to larger operational themes or efforts.

The official nightly JUSPAO briefings were soon nicknamed “Five o’clock Follies” by journalists. Determined to end the mocking, the embassy moved the briefings to 16.45.⁵¹

(17)

Inaccurate information presented at the JUSPAO briefings helped to breed a lack of both governmental and military credibility among journalists. An example of growing journalistic scepticism regarding the war’s operational strategy will be presented next.

1.2.1 Tear and Nausea Gas

According to Hammond, in late 1964 South Vietnamese commanders were planning to introduce tear- and nausea producing gasses to the war effort. Deployment of the gasses was considered a better option compared with the usage of heavy artillery and air strikes in situations where civilians could get killed. Even though the gasses were standard riot-control agents, American military public-affairs officers (PAOs) recognized early on that journalists would react in a negative fashion towards the use of gas. The State and Defense Department, however, refused to make any statement about the gasses. They believed that it would give the enemy, who knew that U.S. allies in Europe still remembered the usage of mustard-gas during World War Two, a propaganda advantage when claiming that the U.S. was involved with gassing innocent people⁵²

After learning about an incident where a twelve-year old girl had suffered from a swollen face after being exposed to the gases, Peter Arnett from the television channel CNN, asked PAOs at the JUSPAO for an explanation for why the military accepted usage of gas that harmed civilians. The PAOs, following orders from Washington, declined to respond.⁵³ The refusal to make a statement eventually backfired. Declining to respond to questions regarding U.S. involvement in the deployment of gasses, gave the impression that it was the JUSPAO that was being uncooperative and not Washington who had actually given the orders.

Hammond states that when an explanation was finally given, journalists around the world paid little attention to it and instead preferred to interpret it as a confirmation of Peter Arnett’s story.⁵⁴ Hammond cites two news articles mentioning Arnett’s discovery. On March 24 1965, the Washington Post wrote that “[t]he argument that the non-toxic gag is more merciful than anti-personnel weapons has some merit, but not much. Although the gas may not be poison, the word is, and all the propaganda resources in the world cannot explain away its employment as an act of Christian charity.”⁵⁵ Similarly, on the same date The New York Times wrote that “[e]ven a temporarily disabling gas could kill the sick and the very young.”⁵⁶ These negative news articles bluntly criticised the military.

When refusing to answer questions, the Johnson administration created problems for itself. First, all the commotion regarding the use of gas, despite that it was relatively harmless, revealed that the U.S. had not ratified the International Protocol on Gas Warfare, a protocol

(18)

very important to for example Great Britain. The Johnson administration had planned to escalate the war in April 1965 and was afraid of loosing any support to their advance.⁵⁷

Second, Wall Street Journal reporter Philip Geyelin argues that the significance of the episode was not the deployment of the gas itself, but rather the uproar that followed. When countries and allies around the world protested, Americans were left with the impression that the U.S. was much more alone on the issue of Vietnam than what President Johnson had been willing to admit.⁵⁸ The episode clearly indicates that American journalists no longer bluntly believed everything they were told at official military briefings or automatically accepted information that came from the Johnson administration. This marked a significant shift from writing “the President says that black is white”.

1.3 Government Reaction to Increased Media Scepticism

The State Department was alarmed by journalists’ eagerness to cover American soldiers engaging in ground combat. After discussing various approaches on how to handle journalistic access to information with PAOs, MACV and representatives from all U.S.

agencies at a conference in March 18-20 1965, a system of voluntary media cooperation was settled upon.⁵⁹ In broad terms, the new system meant that print journalists, no matter who they worked for, had to voluntarily agree to be placed under certain restrictions in order to be accredited and receive different kinds of benefits that accompanied this status.

The voluntary system consisted of fourteen categories of rules that needed to be followed. The rules were issued by the Pentagon and were designed to protect military intelligence that could assist the enemy. Journalists had to agree to:

Never to reveal future plans, operations, or air strikes; information on rules of engagement; or the amounts of ordnance or fuel on hand to support combat units. During an operation, unit designations, troop movements, and tactical deployments were to remain secret. So were the methods, activities, and specific locations of intelligence units; the exact number and type of casualties suffered by friendly forces; the number of sorties and amount of ordnance delivered outside of South Vietnam; and information on aircraft taking off for, en route to, or returning from target areas. The press was also to avoid publishing details on the number of aircraft damaged by enemy antiaircraft defenses; tactical specifics such as altitudes, courses, speeds, or angles of attack; anything that would tend to confirm planned strikes which failed to occur for any reason, including bad weather; the types of enemy weapons that had shot down friendly aircraft; and anything having to do with efforts to find and rescue downed airmen while a search was in progress.⁶⁰

If a journalist ignored the rules, he/she would lose his/her accreditation.⁶¹ In a way one could say that the ground-rules symbolized a kind of trade-off between the press and Pentagon.

Journalists promised not to reveal certain information and in return they received access to other kinds of information they needed in order to do their job. Vietnam thus became the first

(19)

U.S. war in which journalists were routinely accredited to accompany military forces, but not subjected to formal censorship.⁶²

Politically and military there were many reasons for choosing not to officially censor news reports. First, the Vietnam War was a limited war. Hallin claims that a “limited war”

classification meant that the U.S. was only guests-participants in the war because a declaration of war was never issued by the U.S. Imposing censorship in an undeclared war where America was formally the guest of South Vietnam was politically impractical. The South Vietnamese government was a fully functioning and sovereign government so the Johnson administration could not impose rules regarding censorship as they pleased.⁶³ If the South Vietnamese government decided to impose full censorship themselves it would not have worked because South Vietnam lacked any concept of a free press. As a result, the government would be able to apply strict censorship whenever an American wrote or said something they did not like.⁶⁴ Imposing censorship would also require an enormous logistical effort by the military. All mail, communications, and transportation facilities would have to be controlled by cooperative multilingual personnel.⁶⁵

Censoring news reports would also cause major uproar amongst news bureaus and journalists. This became evident when journalists were given restricted access to American airbases at Da Nang and Bien Hoa. According to the new rules, each journalist needed a military escort when visiting the bases, but there were only two officers available and more than thirty print journalists in the area. An assembly of American public-affairs officers concluded that the closing of the airbases and restrictions on the press would only spark further uproars, and the new rules were abolished.⁶⁶

Journalists agreed to follow the voluntary ground-rule system, but as the war continued to escalate it became obvious that in order to serve as a check on the government, the ground rules had to be violated. Morley Safer from CBS News illustrated this in a news report. Safer criticized a Marine operation that had gone wrong in the village of Cam Ne on August 3, 1965. Fred Friendly, the president of CBS News, defended Safer: “We don’t want to violate purely military security with reports which could endanger the life of a single soldier, but by the same token, we must insist upon out right to report what is actually happening despite the political consequences…”⁶⁷ Despite journalistic violation of the ground rules, no censorship was implemented because it would mean that future critical news reports such as editorials and news analysis would have to be censored. To do so would violate the First Amendment and then the Congress, the public, and the overall media could start to unite in opposition towards Johnson and the war.⁶⁸

(20)

1.3.1 Body Counts and Diverting Claims

The war produced more and more American casualties while the enemy did not show any sign of retaliating in the near future. Fearing for an erosion of public support, Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for public affairs, pointed to the journalistic tendency of interpreting the absence of a large body count as evidence that a mission had failed.⁶⁹ Fearing for a loss of public support, Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered in October 1965 that every American military unit were to produce a weekly situation report which stated that pre- set governmental objectives had been met.⁷⁰ Since detecting and fighting the enemy was difficult, seizing territory and measuring captured weapons and incidents of enemy defection was hard. In order to show some degree of progress and success, the U.S. military started to count killed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers. In essence, the logic behind the body- count procedure was that if more enemy soldiers than American soldiers were killed, the U.S.

was much closer to victory.⁷¹ Many military officers also believed that their promotion was determined by how many enemies their unit killed.⁷²

In his book My American Journey, Colin Powell, retired four-star U.S. Army general and the 65^th Secretary of State, writes that a typical conversation between a commander and an operator asking for the number of enemy killed went as followed: “How many did your platoon get?” “I don’t know. We saw two for sure.” “Well, if you saw two, there were probably eight. So let’s say ten.”⁷³ It was also reported in The New York Times that “United States Marines had managed to trap about 2,000 Vietcongs guerrilla with their backs to the sea and killed “hundreds” of them in the first major battle involving American troops in Vietnam.”⁷⁴ Lieutenant Calley, later indicted for being responsible for a massacre at My Lai, remember his encounter with the body counts procedure,

I like if I can encourage them and say, “Outstanding.” Or even, “Chalk up a body count of twelve.” It helps the artillery`s moral: but I couldn`t do it. I hadn’t seen a VC all that day. I knew damn well, Weber`s dead. A boy in the second platoon has no legs anymore. A boy in the third platoon- I had to do it. I wrote in the after-action report “VC body count six.⁷⁵

Inaccurate numbers of killed enemy was also produced when many units were involved in the same battle. When an enemy was killed, every unit present reported that hit which meant that the killed enemy was counted several times. These false numbers were reported further up the chain-of-command which again resulted in false announcements to journalists. Flawed internal data was presented as true facts and thus contributed to the false positive picture of the war that military officials presented at the nightly JUSPAO briefings.⁷⁶

President Johnson himself sometimes referred to false body count numbers when he wanted to talk about the war’s progress.⁷⁷ In late 1967 official numbers claimed that 220,000

(21)

enemy soldiers were killed. Later it was estimated that approximately 30 percent of the reported numbers were misleading claims.⁷⁸ Charles Morh of The New York Times reveals his disgust for the body counting procedure when asserting that “a steady stream of misinformation” was emanating from U.S military commanders.⁷⁹

Most journalists longer viewed government-provided information a viable option when writing their reports and instead collected information from other sources. From regarding the government a provider of reliable information to accusing it of manipulating information reveals a paradigm-shift in media-government relation in the war. By no longer bluntly relying on official information while at the same time being eager to report the “true”

picture of the war meant that the media business, in theory, were now able to serve as a check on the government in an unprecedented scale compared to earlier in the war.

When using alternative sources, American journalists came to be regarded as a means for spreading North Vietnamese communist propaganda by the military and the Johnson administration, exemplified here by news reports cited in both Hammond and Wyatt. North Vietnamese officials had invited the Assistant Managing director of The New York Times, Harrison E. Salisbury, to North Vietnam and showed him towns and villages they claimed had been hit by American bombs.⁸⁰ Salisbury published articles about his visit. The stories caused havoc in Congress and in the media. Walter Cronkite of CBS News claimed that Salisbury’s articles had widened the credibility gap between the press and the U.S. military and the Johnson Administration and military public affairs officers accused Salisbury of placing too much faith in what the North Vietnamese had told him.⁸¹

In his articles, Salisbury had questioned whether the city of Nam Ding contained important military targets. According to Hammond, the city actually housed a petroleum storage facility, an important railroad yard, and a thermal power plant that was heavily guarded by the largest concentration of antiaircraft weaponry in North Vietnam.⁸² The military claimed that Salisbury never had visited the region and had only used quotations from North Vietnamese officials.⁸³ Salisbury’s objectivity were questioned when news desks learned about the military’s claim of the reports being full of North Vietnamese propaganda.

The Washington Post started to question whether the articles were reliable or not. Hammond explains that in the days that followed, New York Times editors also rejected what the stories alleged. They called the stories “sweeping denunciations and false conclusions”⁸⁴ and argued that “the whole tone of this story [Salisbury’s] gives the impression that the United States is deliberately undertaking saturation and population bombing, and it swallows the Communist line almost hook, line and sinker.”⁸⁵ The Salisbury-articles, however, had already influenced

(22)

negative sentiments towards the war back home. One of the news articles said that “ [t]he aims, aspirations and operations of the Northern Liberal Front are viewed by its leadership in terms sharply different from the picture held by many Americans.”⁸⁶ Publishing articles that favored the North Vietnamese hurt the negative assessment that President Johnson and his administration wanted to portray of their enemy.

1.4 Media-Military Relations

Johnson’s news manipulation did not only damage the government’s credibility with the overall media, but it also sat precedence on how the media in general and the military came to understand one another with regards to credibility and trust. As seen earlier in the chapter, the U.S. military was frequently used as an instrument for building public support for the war.

Military PAOs are first and foremost responsible for reporting military war progress and making assessments and recommendations. In Vietnam, military personnel also became involved with justifying the war politically, despite that efforts were made to divorce MACV from domestic policies. Both General Westmoreland and Barry Zorthian, who was in charge of media relations and internal communications from 1964 to 1968, made major efforts to downplay Johnson’s war-strategies justifications in the command’s official statements.⁸⁷ When anti-war sentiments continued to grow in the U.S., Johnson ordered General Westmoreland to give a speech at the National Press Club on November 21 1965.

In his speech, General Westmoreland talked about the war in very optimistic terms. He claimed that “success lies within our grasp”⁸⁸ and revealed his strategic plan and indicated that the U.S. could soon withdraw after turning more responsibility over to the South Vietnamese government.⁸⁹ General Westmoreland continued to appraise the war-effort when later being interviewed and elaborated it even further on a “Meet the Press” program.⁹⁰

The war, however, was not going in the direction that General Westmoreland announced that it was. While the war and the war-effort was sugar-coated by the State and Defense Department, and President Johnson late in 1967, military leaders in North Vietnam believed that it was time to take action and decided to step up their operations in South Vietnam. Their ultimate goal was to bring the war to an end with a major offensive. In order to succeed, they sought to drive the Americans out of the South Vietnamese cities, infiltrate personnel and material into the cities, and eventually overthrow the South Vietnamese government.⁹¹

The North Vietnamese attacked on January 31, 1968. About 67,000 Viet Cong soldiers and North Vietnamese troops assaulted 36 South Vietnamese provincial capitals, five

(23)

of the six autonomous cities, and 64 of the 242 district capitals.⁹² In historical terms, the attack has later been referred to as the Tet Offensive, named after the Vietnamese lunar New Year celebration. Tactically and operationally, the Tet Offensive was a victory for the South Vietnamese and American forces.⁹³ By the end of February, North Vietnam had suffered major losses in casualties. Between 45,000 and 84,000 soldiers were killed. 14,000 South Vietnamese and 4000 Americans lost their lives.⁹⁴

Tet, however, became a major political, psychological, diplomatic, and strategic defeat for the ARVN and the U.S forces. Since the American people had been told as late as November 1967 that victory was in sight, the attack came as a massive shock.⁹⁵ For years the Vietnam War had been characterized as winnable and just. Suddenly the war had instead become brutal, inhumane, and costly.⁹⁶ A New York Times article, published February 2, 1968, reported that in the State Department, the Capitol Hill, and in the Pentagon people described the attack as “humiliating” and “embarrassing” to the Johnson administration and the South Vietnamese Government.⁹⁷

1.4.1 Media Reaction to the Tet Offensive

Pictures of killed American soldiers and civilians and reports of atrocities and devastation did not resemble anything the American people had been exposed to before, at least not in such a massive scale. The result was that both journalists and the American people felt betrayed by the military and the Johnson administration. The reality of the war did not fit what the public had been told.

Many civilians, including journalists present in Vietnam, argue that journalists did not do an acceptable job when reporting during Tet. Peter C. Rollins, professor eritmus of English and American film, writes that coverage of Tet has been described as dishonest, unprofessional and irresponsible⁹⁸ while Hallin and Braestrup argue that many of the news reports that were published lacked accuracy.⁹⁹ The press’s handling of an attack on the U.S.

Embassy is a good example of inaccurate reporting. On January 31, journalists heard fire coming from the direction of the American embassy. When talking to military police at the scene, journalists were told that North Vietnamese soldiers had managed to enter the lower floors of the building. The U.S State Department, however, had running contact with the embassy and was informed by the staff that the embassy was not penetrated by the enemy.¹⁰⁰ In order to counter the rumours, President Johnson, once again, ordered General Westmoreland to hold a press conference everyday during the offensive, in order to “convey your confidence in our capability to blunt these enemy moves, and to reassure the public that

(24)

you have the situation under control.”¹⁰¹ At this point, the press no longer trusted information published by the government.¹⁰² A New York Times article, cited in Hammond, reported as late as February 2 1968 that guerrillas had penetrated at least the first floor of the embassy.¹⁰³ Pictures and reports that lacked context also contributed to faulty reporting. One of the best known pictures from the Vietnam War was captured during Tet was taken by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams. He took a picture of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the national Chief of Police, executing a Viet Cong officer in the streets of Saigon.¹⁰⁴ The Viet Cong officer was believed to have killed a major and his family.¹⁰⁵ The picture, captured as a photograph and on TV-film, was described as “the strongest stuff American viewers had ever seen.”¹⁰⁶ Rollins accuse journalists writing about the incident of distorting the situation since the picture was not accompanied with any information of what had happened earlier or with the reason for the execution.¹⁰⁷

It exist multiple opinions to why news reports were so inaccurate. Braestrup explains that before Tet, frustrated journalists could not actually prove that President Johnson’s optimism was exaggerated, but when the North Vietnamese attacked, the primary reaction of many journalists was to indulge in retribution for prior manipulation.¹⁰⁸ This claim is not very plausible because most journalists working for serious, national-wide newspapers, and TV- networks usually have large amounts of integrity and take their profession seriously. Wyatt claims that overloaded phone systems made it difficult to dictate dispatches or verify information with sources outside Saigon¹⁰⁹, while Major Edward L. English (U.S. Army) emphasis two economic aspects of the news business and a military bureaucratic obstacle his thesis “Towards a More Productive Military-Media Relationship”. First, because not all news bureaus could spend an unlimited amount of resources, meant that many journalists could not spend many hours a day performing investigative journalism in the field before handing in a news report. Most journalists covered the attack from Saigon, Ke Sanh, and Hue where the most dramatic scenes occurred. Scenes from the large cities were not symptomatic with the U.S. military counter-offensive across South Vietnam. Second, the news-business is competitive and hectic. In order to keep up with other news agencies, journalists had to report as fast as they could which, again, limited them from producing investigative and objective journalism.¹¹⁰ General Westmoreland was also left with the impression that journalists were hunters, only out looking for the next big scoop when arguing that:

Chet Huntley on the NBC Evening News had the VC inside the Chancery, the defenders in the compound outside. There was no report on Allied casualties in Saigon, said Huntley, “but they`re believed to be high”. Was that kind of gratuitous speculation justified? Was the long, costly American effort in Vietnam to be sacrificed to the idols of sensation and competition?¹¹¹

(25)

To learn about military movements and combats out on the battlefield, journalists had to make contact with Brigadier General Winant Sidle (U.S. Army) or his staff at the MACOI, who received information from MACV. When Tet occurred, MACOI were unable to keep up with all events and passing out information to journalists. English argues that this lack of military information forced journalists to speculate about the attack and the progress of the counteroffensive.¹¹² Robin Anderson, Adrian R. Lewis, and Braestrup, however, argue that the passive reaction of the Johnson administration permitted both journalists and his political opponents to argue that the attack was a major U.S. defeat. For two months, no official government explanation was voiced.¹¹³

1.4.2 Credibility Gap

After Tet, journalistic scepticism towards the Johnson administration and the military had blossomed into a “credibility gap” and media-military relations had become very strained.

When the true picture of the war was exposed, journalists that still attended official briefings no longer believed PAOs when they presented statements of war progress. After being exposed as “dishonest,” the press challenged and questioned every military move and announcement.¹¹⁴ Christopher Paul and James J. Kim argue that “Tet clearly exposed the falsehood of administration claims and pushed many reporters from scepticism to outright mistrust of the military”¹¹⁵ Major Michael P. Erdle (U.S Army) concurs when writing that journalists believed that they had been intentionally misled by the military.¹¹⁶

Hammond argues that the credibility-gap heavily influenced how journalists wrote their reports after 1968. Instead of focusing solely on reporting facts about combat, they wrote highly critical and analytical reports. Journalists also directly criticised the military, emphasizing problems connected to race relations and increasing drug abuse amongst soldiers.¹¹⁷ The military was criticized and presented as dishonest and manipulative. Because official censorship was never present in Vietnam, the Johnson administration could not impose regulations on journalists’ negative reporting of the war and the military. By being involved with “selling the war” to journalists and the American people, the military came to symbolize a failed war-strategy. Braestrup argues that there had been an “unprecedented use of the military to achieve domestic political objectives” and media criticism was directed toward the military instead of the Johnson administration.¹¹⁸

(26)

1.4.3 Military Reaction to Media Coverage of the Tet Offensive

The question of whether or not journalists’ inaccurate reporting during Tet led to increasing anti-war sentiments in the U.S has been extensively debated. Although recognizing that many news reports veered widely from reality¹¹⁹, Braestrup argues that there exist no evidence of a direct relationship between the dominant media themes in 1968 and the upsurge of anti-war sentiments in the U.S.¹²⁰ He believes that it was President Johnson’s inability to choose the right policies and strategies that led to the defeat.¹²¹

The military does not agree with Braestrup. General Westmoreland believes that “[t]he war still could have been brought to a favorable end following the [communist] defeat ... But this was not to be. Press and television had created an aura, not of victory, but defeat”. Just as journalists had developed distrust towards the military, the military also underwent a change in attitude toward the media in general. After Tet, many inside the military viewed both newspapers and television-stations as subversive and unpatriotic.¹²² They believed that the media had singlehandedly turned the American people against the war and American soldiers by publishing false and inaccurate information. In other words, a large majority of the military believed that it was journalists who gave people back home a reason to doubt both the incentive to win the war as well as the war’s moral and ethical justifications.

According to Braestrup, this negative attitude penetrated the military from top- management and down to captains and lieutenants. Hundred top officials who served in command positions in Vietnam were interviewed in a survey. Thirty-eight believed that newspapers coverage of the war was “on the whole tended to be irresponsible and disruptive of United States effort in Vietnam”, fifty-one believed the coverage was “uneven. Some good, but many irresponsible”, eight believed that newspapers played an important role in keeping the United States informed. Three did not answer or provided other answers.¹²³ General Westmoreland himself also felt that unfavourable and unfair press coverage influenced Nixon’s decision to withdraw from the war. Rid cites a Military Review article where General Westmoreland argues that the mood of the Congress was, “a reflection of public attitudes, in turn influenced profoundly by the media- particularly by daily television reports- grew further away from the policy of the executive branch.”¹²⁴

Hallin claims that it was easier for policymakers or military commanders to blame journalists rather than to admit that they had allowed themselves to be victims of the Johnson’s administrations propaganda scheme.¹²⁵ Douglas Porch, professor of national security affairs, however, argues that the absence of victory was the reason for why the

A free press in a free society? : American post-Vietnam military public-affairs strategies and their influence on press coverage